Three of Britain’s most acclaimed classical musicians are to be recognised in the 2014 New Year’s Honours list.

Composer and Master of the Queen’s Music Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is appointed a Companion of Honour. The official citation praised his work in raising the profile of music in Great Britain and abroad, ‘composing many works for Royal occasions’ and being ‘an especial champion for music education and music in Scotland.’

Sir Simon Rattle, for 12 years now principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, has been appointed Order of Merit - an order in the gift of the monarch, and only held by 24 people at any one time.

Pianist Stephen Hough has been named a CBE. One of the world’s leading soloists and a prolific recording artist - his set of Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concertos won Gramophone’s Gold Disc Award in 2008 - Hough is also a composer, and writer on arts and religion. 

A CBE also went to the opera director John Copley whose work includes Covent Garden's much-loved 1974 production of Puccini's La bohème (which returns to the stage in July).